“Somali Week Festival has been going strong for over a decade and it has been a delight to watch it grow and share our wonderful heritage with the world. Long may it continue.” Dr Idil Osman (Senior Teaching Fellow, SOAS, University of London)
Kayd Somali Arts and Culture is delighted to be back this year to present the 9th Somali Week Festival 2017 at Oxford House in Bethnal Green and at major venues across London. This popular and welcoming festival is a part of Black History Month and showcases the best of Somali Arts and Culture; contemporary and traditional. This year’s programme features hugely popular Somali singers Hodan Abdirahman and Maryan Mursal, poets include the renowned Jama Kediya and Saciid Saalax as well as photographer Yasin Osman and filmmaker Mo Ali.
The festival opens on October 20th at the British Library, the largest library in the world, and introduces this year’s theme of home and displacement. This year for the first time, Somali Week Festival has teamed up with Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival, to showcase British-Somali women poets. Other highlights include a reading of ‘Catastrophe’ (Galiilyo) by rising star poet Xasan Dahir Weedhsame, whose new work reads like a cry of fury about the ongoing refugee crisis across Europe and has an urgent message for everyone in the UK in 2017. There is also an eagerly awaited lecture in UCL by leading academics in the field of Somali Studies, brothers Professor Ahmed Samatar and Professor Abdi Samatar from the United States.
Somali Week Festival represents Somalis across the Horn without any political affiliation and it is a space for all Somalis to feel welcomed and represented.
“Kayd is proud to invite artists and academics from across genres and generations to come together and understand each other’s perspectives on displacement and to reflect and re-imagine home”
The ever-popular final night concert, Final Beats at Hammersmith Townhall features the best in Somali music from UK and Sweden as well as The Horn and promises a night of live music and dancing and a space for everyone to enjoy themselves.
This year’s Festival themes of home and displacement put us at the heart of contemporary debates about forced migration, mobility, integration and tightening border controls. The psychological, cultural, social, political and economic impact of migration inspire artistic expression and academic research in equal measure, as shown in this year’s dynamic and diverse programme.
We invite you to join us for performances, talks and presentations by inspiring, insightful thinkers and artists and to contribute to the many discussions that we will be holding throughout this 10-day festival!
We offer free entrance to several events and tickets prices range from £6 to £30 for an all-inclusive Week Pass available from: Eventbrite, Southbank and the British Library websites.
Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom–london/somali-week-festival/?crt=regular&sort=best
Southbank: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/123467-sea-migrations-british-somali-women-poets-2017
British Library: https://www.bl.uk/events/home-and-displacement-somali-week-festival-launch
Somali Week Festival’s presence on social media will be via:
Twitter: @SomaliWeekFest
Facebook: KaydSomaliArts
For more information please contact: Hanna Ali, Assistant Manager at Somali Week Festival email: info@kayd.org Mobile: 07930655653
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